Tag: organization

During our years in a former church my wife and I heard repeated admonitions from the leadership to greet visitors. Then a couple years ago we found ourselves visiting churches looking for a new church community. Now we were the newcomers. In some of the communities I noticed obvious personal connections between congregants that were not readily visible in others.

The common thread appeared to be that the communities with this “connectedness” had a single service and were smaller congregations [1]. I can’t claim to be able to tease these observations apart. The impact of multiple services could simply be a matter of a meeting location that doesn’t work particularly well, such as with crowd bottlenecks in congested building entrances. But group size, on the other hand, seems to have some inherent dynamics beyond the physical constraints of a meeting place.

I’ve spent most of my working career inside of large organizations and something fundamentally different is going on among people in small social groups vs large ones. In large groups the organizational structure, whatever that happens to be, seems to consistently take on a life of its own and define the function of the group, rather than any shared sense of mission or purpose.

There is a good chance this is a byproduct our cognitive makeup. In the early 1990s British anthropologist Robin Dunbar observed a correlation between the average size of primate social groups and neocortex size [2]. Dunbar extrapolated from that to calculate the number of stable social relationships that humans could comfortably have as somewhere between 150 and 200. He also made the following observation about human use of language, that it,

“…has two unusual properties that make it possible to form groups that are substantially larger than the 150-200 predicted by neocortex size: it allows us (1) to categorise individuals into types and (2) to instruct other individuals as to how they should behave towards specific types of individuals within society.”[3]

In short, it allows us to organize, which suggests a fundamental insight about why organizational structures dominate how people interact when group size grows. Below the limit interaction is about social connection. Above the limit interaction is driven by categorization and instruction.

Since Dunbar first published there appears to be have been a fair bit of debate as to where this boundary actually is, as well as contrary voices pointing out that personal networks in the modern world can be far larger [4]. I am not qualified to wander into the weeds here. All I am suggesting is that the boundary is real and has practical effects on the way social groups and organizing institutions work. And a good bit of political and economic theory seems to be blissfully unaware of it [5].

Why this matters to churches is that in the midst of theology and spiritual experience we seem to forget the limitations that characterize our physical existence. These just might include aspects of how our brains are wired. We are called into allegiance to the Body of Christ as part and parcel of our allegiance to the risen Lord. But it is possible that we can unnecessarily complicate the outworking of that when the structures we create don’t account for our material boundaries.

This problem seems to me to reach back into the ancient world. Group size was necessarily small when Christianity was a disfavored and sometimes persecuted minority. Faith can certainly come through preaching but in a hostile environment it would spread primarily via personal contact along social networks, such as families, work, and in the marketplace. Communities would be small and in periods of calm they could aggregate at the level of individual churches. But with numerical growth comes categorization and direction. And in learning how to do this the church absorbed the centralized authority practices of the surrounding culture.

And then Constantine’s official recognition of Christianity removed the limits to group size. At large scales centralized authority became a dominant feature of how the Church presented itself. It became an earthly kingdom that looked a whole lot like emperor, monarch, and baron. It is debatable how much this mirrored the kingdom Jesus describe to Pilate as “not of this world.”

We have the conceit in the modern world to believe we have put all this aside. But we also tend to uncritically absorb the authority and organizational structures from our own culture. And as our churches grow those structures come to dominate how they present to the world. Some of them have come to look a whole lot like corporations.

Ripon Cathedral

I am not trying to suggest that churches can’t ever be large, or that everything is inherently sweetness and light in small congregations. There are probably constructive ways that groups can grow in size and still foster stable community. There is nothing in Dunbar’s research to suggest that this is not possible.

But is is likely to require conscious thinking about limits as a church grows. Otherwise community is likely to be snuffed out by organization.

Size matters.

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[1] By smaller I mean relative to what we were accustomed. We participated in the same community for nearly three decades. At the beginning attendance was a bit north of 300. At one point attendance peaked at roughly 1000. Relative to some mega-churches even this might be considered small.

[5] This is probably why some of our grand ideas do not scale well. Consider, for instance, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That probably only can work when the “eachs” all know each other. Or have reliable knowledge of reputation, and can readily identify freeloaders, liars and the power-hungry. The moment organization is applied to scale up the idea it becomes all about the apparatus required to collect from those with ability and distribute to those with need. A weak apparatus will collapse under the weight of the freeloaders. A strong apparatus will be dominated by the likes of Stalin and Mao.

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I recently finished Church Refugees, authored by sociologists Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. It is a book about the exit from American churches of the talented and committed. The book challenges preconceptions about the dynamics of this exodus. Packard and Hope discovered something during their research that was rather different from what they expected to find, that “…the story of the dechurched was a story of modern religious organizations and institutions stifling people’s ability to engage with each other and their communities.”[1] The dechurched encountered during the study aren’t done with God. But as the book relates, they are “done with church.”

The discussions I have found about this book since publication appear to focus on what the “dones” expressed about why the left[2]. Commenters in online venues also had things to say about the theology of those doing the leaving – this was an aspect of the conflicted and frustrated space I was in when I heard about the book.

On reflection since it does seem clear that there are theological issues in play. I don’t think that it is possible to compartmentalize our faith by separating loyalty to the risen Christ from loyalty to the community of his people. Attempting to do so simply ignores what Paul has to say about the body of Christ and the bride of Christ. But having said that, “dones” leaving churches might actually communicate very little about the theology of those doing the leaving. It might instead say rather a lot about the actual expression of a professed theology in the place that is being left.

Beneath the surface of dissatisfaction with “church” are ways in which the insides of Christian organizations look unfortunately a lot like the insides of any other. Which is why I think Packard’s comments are such a big deal. What especially caught my attention was a comment on organization in Chapter 4.

“Existing research suggests that in any bureaucracy, power tends to become centralized, innovation is gradually diminished, and routines become cemented as the organization grows or simply continues to exist over time. The nature of the modern bureaucracy is to erase individual desire. In order to resist those forces, organizational leaders must be intentional and strategic. It’s not enough to simply wish for things to be participative and innovative. How many pastors have lamented the slow pace of change in their own congregations? Even founding pastors often find that after only a few short months or years of doing church, they’ve largely lost the ability to move the congregation in a new direction. This is true of all modern organizations, not just churches. It’s the nature of bureaucracies, not a function of poor leadership, bad vision, a sign of the withdrawal of God’s grace, or unfaithful followers. It’s simply a part of living in the modern world.”[3]

Most of the comment online about this book seems to drive right past issues of organization.

The last time I thought about the matter it coalesced into a rather fuzzy idea of how adoption of a specific organizational form might yield toxic byproducts. Which I think is still the case but I’ve since begun to wonder if something far more fundamental might be in play. I have had the opportunity to watch group dynamics from the insides of large organizations over the years. My sense is that there is something hard-wired about us that affects how large numbers of people behave when they are together[4].

We can’t do without organization except at very small scales — any numerical growth beyond what will fit in the front room of an apartment necessitates it. And more growth necessitates more organization. It seems to me that, absent some critical thinking while our groups grow, the features of whatever organizational structure we adopt are going to come to define the way the groups work. Which is likely to trump any theology we claim about the body of Christ.

If this is the case it will be true of any organizational form.

At some point nearly everybody rails about “the system.” The problem is that, get enough of us together in one place and there will always be a system. So rather than critiquing the “dones” who left, we ought to be thinking about how those of us who stay reflect the body of Christ when we meet. And if we don’t reflect the body of Christ, we ought to be thinking about what it is about our particular group that gets in the way.

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[1] Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. Church Refugees: Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith. Group Publishing, Inc. 2015. Kindle edition, locations 86-87. See also: https://dechurched.net/church-refugees/

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In the middle third century a Church council assembled at Antioch and deposed the local bishop, Paul of Samosata. Paul appears to have taught that Christ was a mere man infused with the divine, a view at odds with the dominant consensus about Jesus’ pre-existence. Unfortunately for the council Paul held a government position and also had the backing of the queen of Palmyra. The other bishops were consequently unable to actually dislodge him until after the Roman emperor Aurelian defeated the queen and reasserted control over the eastern empire. The bishops applied to Aurelian to pry Paul loose and the emperor deferred to the bishops of Italy and Rome.

“Vexilloid of the Roman Empire” by Ssolbergj

Discussion of this incident seems to focus on the theology as well as accusations of abuse of position and self-enrichment recorded by Eusebius [1]. But the ties to civil government clearly made the problem more difficult for the early church to address — they provided Paul with resources to resist the other bishops. An underlying issue is summed up in a comment in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. The behavior of Paul “offers significant evidence that urban churches were seeking men of power and culture for their bishops.”[2] This points to a similarity in functional usage between the activity of civil government and the office of bishop. The latter had become compatible with the exercise of autocratic authority.

The office of bishop seems to have originally been anchored in a plurality of leadership and by this time it was clearly losing that character. One cause put forth as an impetus was a need for strong leadership in the second-century theological controversies. Other contributors have been suggested. I recently found an argument by Joanna Dewey that posits writing and literacy as a mechanism of control which facilitated “…the shift to manuscript-based authority and to the hegemony and control of Christian churches by a small, educated male elite.”[3]

I am fairly new to academic writings on the early church but so far most of what I’ve read seems to look right past issues of process and structure. For example Dewey has some very interesting things to say about orality in the first-century church but also appears to overstate the usefulness of writing in the exercise of control. In the context of ancient Rome she writes that the “…administrative letter was the essential tool for regulating the empire’s business…”[4]

Which appears to simply ignore practical realities of time and distance communications in the ancient world.[5] I would suggest instead that the essential tool for regulating the business of empire was loyal and reasonably competent local administration. Given this there is a better candidate driving the development of monoepiscopacy and its subsequent dysfunctional compatibility with autocratic Roman power. These are rooted in general observations on organization that seems to apply to the church as well.

Once any group of people expands beyond a certain point in numbers and scope of activity some degree of organization becomes necessary. It allows for specialization and cooperation, increasing the reach of the group beyond what individuals are capable of. This can grow up organically at small scales as individuals are found to have aptitudes for particular roles. Such organic development seems to characterize the apostles’ call to recruit people to administrate the distribution of support to widows. But in the centuries following this nascent bit of organizing something clearly went off the rails.

The activities of large numbers of people are not well administrated by informal methods. Whatever the actual initial impetus for monoepiscopacy, the efficiency of the expedient would rapidly lead to consolidation of function as an organizational form. It’s not difficult to see where this would come from. Monarchy was a familiar form in the ancient world. And administration of Roman provinces was carried out by governors who combined supreme civil and military authority.

In all fairness the early church didn’t have much in the way of alternative examples. But an inherent conflict exists between the tendencies of autocratic forms and what Jesus had in mind when he called leaders to be servants. Autocratic leadership forms (and styles) work best when the leader is both highly directive and able to cultivate initiative on the part of subordinates who are both loyal and competent. This is an organizational thought process which does not seem inherently conducive to either pastoral ministry or the cultivation of community. With the right leaders it might be theoretically possible to navigate.

But salt in the inevitable bits of sloth, hubris, and avarice, along with assorted other vices and things come apart. Sloth is perhaps the most insidious as it is common, easy to camouflage, and locks other problems in place. As all organizations grow and roles differentiate, individuals and groups with specialized tasks rapidly become used to doing things in particular ways. There are a limited number of things anyone can attend to and sloth provides a powerful incentive to attend to as few things as possible. Which means most people and groups will cease to look beyond their specialized roles and become highly resistant to changing those roles.

When change inevitably becomes necessary this puts specialized roles in the larger group out of sync with each other, spawning conflict. This in turn, creates an incentive for competition within an organization as individuals and groups seek to reinforce their specialized roles. In hierarchical structures some will seek to improve their position within the hierarchy at the expense of others — the more energetic and adaptable among them will be the most successful at this. This competition puts individuals and groups at cross-purposes with each other, and with whatever the original goals of the larger group may have been.

Autocratic structures are inherently dependent on capable and energetic top leadership to counter sloth and reign in competition in order to stay on mission. This dependency increases as the structure grows in size and in the scope of activity. The dependency also builds in a high vulnerability to the avarice of such leadership, as well as a high vulnerability to the avarice of energetic subordinates, if such a leader is lacking. The vulnerability can be mitigated by reliance on rigid codes of behavior, such as in military organizations, but this brings problems of its own. Autocratic systems can rapidly come to be all about giving and following directives, and competition over who is giving directives to whom.

The only remedy for the misbehavior of an entrenched autocrat such as Paul of Samosata is the application of raw power. The bishops were obliged to find a more powerful autocrat and they called in the Romans.

The foregoing ought to be a cautionary tale for modern churches and para-church ministries, particularly large ones. We have had a couple of millennia to come up with better ways to do administration but we’re really no different. All modern administrative structures have at least some autocratic aspects. And all have the tendency noted above to reinforce specialized roles at the expense of the overall group. This causes an organization to drift toward stagnation and this drift increases with size.

Large organizations are likely impossible to run any other way. And attempts to counter this in modern corporations, such as by using oversight by an independent board, bring additional baggage. Most churches in the US likely borrow such corporate forms from the culture without giving them a second thought.

Churches call their governance various things (such as elder or deacon boards) but most of them are likely a functional and legal board of directors of a state-charted non-profit corporation. This governing board is bound to legal and ethical obligations that are independent of the organization’s defined structure. And some of these obligations encompass further imperatives that can potentially operate at cross purposes with a church’s ministry.

One example (among others) might illustrate this. Board members have ethical obligations to donors which drives a duty to investigate allegations of mishandling of the funds and assets of the corporation. Board members consequently have an obligation to hear the allegations of good faith whistle-blowers and protect them. It is not difficult to imagine scenarios where this might conflict with what Paul the apostle says about handling accusations against elders.

Most churches probably just muddle on through issues of organization and do just fine at small scales. But a failure to engage the inherent characteristics of organizational forms at larger scales is apt to result in one of two dysfunctional outcomes.

In the first, the church (or para-church ministry) becomes “an institution” and solidifies in harmful ways. Modern practices have mitigated the nastier effects of competition for control and position once characteristic of autocratic administration. But individual and group tendencies to settle into the familiar can freeze specialized roles in place like a glacier in an alpine valley. Those roles might still be in motion. But don’t wait around for them to produce anything.

In the second, actual requirements of the forms are ignored and chaos ensues. In the US this might involve blurring of the obligations inherent in a non-profit entity. Corners get cut, particularly when conflicts of interests are involved. Sometimes liberties are taken. If enough of this happens some injured party files a lawsuit, which is a modern US version of calling in the Romans. After all, the government created the tax-exempt entity in the first place, along with the obligations that go with it.

These outcomes are not mutually exclusive and a crisis precipitated by the first can initiate the second. Neither of them are conducive to building community.

I am not suggesting we can dispense with organization. But unfortunately organization aggregates human frailty, and different organizational forms aggregate frailty in different ways. What I am suggesting is caution about the baggage that comes with organizational forms, and asking questions about the limitations in our approaches to issues of numerical growth and growth in the scale of our activities.

[3] Joanna Dewey. Oral Ethos of the Early Church: Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark. Eugene: Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock, 2013. Kindle Edition, p. 4.

[4] Dewey, (p. 6.).

[5 ] Round-trip messaging durations in ancient Rome were measured in weeks and months. This constrains the practical utility of letters to narrow uses such as broad policy guidance, or to address specific and non-urgent problems raised about the scope or authority of specific local officials. The broader use of an administrative letter, particularly in the case of the emperor and a distant governor, is as an a not too subtle reminder of who is actually in control. The obsequious tone in some of Pliny’s correspondence to Trajan is highly suggestive.

Granted, written material is more reliable than oral messages and probably did facilitate the sprawl of the Roman power. But writing itself is not inherently necessary to run an empire. The Inca may have got on just fine without it. They used knotted and colored string Quipus for administrative recording. These may have also served as a form of writing media but the mechanical nature would be very limiting, and probably not that useful beyond administrative record-keeping.